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SD · Sudan · –

Ar Rusayris fire, 12 November 2025 Ar Rusayris

Out · last detection 22 Nov 2025, 11:11 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2025 in Ar Rusayris, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,402 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 241 in Sudan in 2025, of 342.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (23.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,402ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
12 Nov 2025 – 21 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
1
localities
Started on
12 Nov
2025
Heat detections
39
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
45MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov21 Nov
22 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

12 Nov 2025 · 36 MW · 8 13 Nov 2025 · 139 MW · 19 17 Nov 2025 · 22 MW · 2 18 Nov 2025 · 23 MW · 3 20 Nov 2025 · 62 MW · 3 21 Nov 2025 · 4 MW · 1 22 Nov 2025 · 28 MW · 3
13 Nov 20 Nov 22 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high
45km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Ar Rusayris where it started
    2,417 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Nov 38.6 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Nov 39.8 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Nov 38.3 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Nov 38.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Nov 36.1 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Nov 38.5 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Nov 38.3 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Nov 39.0 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Nov 39.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Nov 40.8 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Nov after 39.2 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Nov after 38.8 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Nov after 39.9 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Nov after 39.3 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
26 Nov after 38.6 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Nov after 38.7 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
28 Nov after 38.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Nov after 40.4 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Nov after 39.2 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Dec after 39.0 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 5 Nov 2025
After · 28 Nov 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 15 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1099 µg/m³
Optical depth0.45
10 Nov12 Nov14 Nov16 Nov
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 39Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Sudan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ar Rusayris fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 November 2025 to 21 November 2025 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 November 2025 to 14 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,402 hectares (24.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ar Rusayris (2,417 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 14 November 2025 → 21 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 November 2025 to 14 November 2025. 39 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.